World of Plenty

World of Plenty

For her contribution to the World Expo exhibition in Aichi, Tea designed a huge panel of images entitled World of Plenty. Assembled from computer-manipulated images, it formed a giant photomontage.

World of Plenty is in fact a wishful creation of the world and, in a way, it comes through as both real and fantastic. Containing images of children, men, women, animals, insects, plants, flowers, mountains, lakes, and even technology, it is by all means a positive vision of the world and life in general. Incidentally, it shows that contemporary artworks need not be negative comments, for they may as well project an insightful image of a positive future and the richness of life.

Personally, I hold that happiness is about being able to deal with nature in a simple, uncomplicated manner — eating a meal, dwelling in a cosy place, melting into society. Respecting one another. To my mind, these and similar things constitute the «various ways of achieving happiness».

Life may be complicated but the question is how to extract its essence and make use of it. If one succeeds in doing so, life is rich and colourful, and certainly worth living. With her magical images, Tea Mäkipää teaches us how to face life. And isn’t that an oft-forgotten role of art?

Fumio Nanjo

I feel that excellent artworks are characterised by a spirit of criticism as regards history and environment. Tea Mäkipää's World of Plenty is a brilliant and beautiful work that lives up to this requirement and reflects the artist's profound knowledge of Japanese culture.

Thirty metres long and three metres high, comprised of three panels, World of Plenty was adapted from the byobu, a Japanese folding screen. It was designed in such a way that viewers saw completely different worlds in the work depending on whether they approached it from the left or the right. Created as a photocollage using the latest computer graphics technology, World of Plenty depicts an ideal world where humans co-exist peacefully and lovingly with nature. The question Tea Mäkiää asks in her work is, “How much benefit do humans really bring to the world?”